


Mythologies

by Thimblerig



Series: On the Decks of La Sirena [6]
Category: Star Trek: Picard
Genre: Artsy-Fartsy Worldbuilding, Camaraderie, Friendship, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Mythology References, kasseelian opera
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:02:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22829911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: The night before Freecloud, he invites Agnes to dinner.
Relationships: Agnes Jurati & Cristóbal Rios, could be read as pre Dr Agnes Jurati/Cristóbal Rios
Series: On the Decks of La Sirena [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1634554
Comments: 6
Kudos: 51





	Mythologies

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this after watching "Stardust City Rag". It has no direct spoilers, and I don't think the themes will give anything away, but. Eh.

Agnes was perched on her bed when Cris found her.

She sat there, feet tucked up like a tailor, and hummed to music as she used an old-fashioned holographic wand to flick images about, with the wall of her room as a back-drop.

A painting of a snow-white girl in an embroidered coat, jumping over a small fire even as her feet melted away, hovered in the top right corner. A facsimiled knotwork embroidery of a woman shaped out of flowers and predatory birds perched in the left, next to a great clay man with letters written on his forehead. In the bottom right a riveted man, drawn in ink, held an axe, frozen, as a little girl poured oil on his joints. Centremost, blown up large, a cartoon mouse in a starry robe flustered over a hopping broom.

Agnes hadn’t noticed him at all.

“Knock, knock,” he said quietly, and she jumped so hard she almost fell off the bed. “Peace,” Cris said, holding out his hands. “I’m just here to invite you to dinner. It’s Raffi’s last night and we wanted to make it memorable.” He frowned. “Or distract her. Probably both, she’s a bit wound up.”

“Oh,” said Agnes. _“Ohhh.”_ Her eyes flickered. “I was, uh, feeling a bit tired. Thought I’d eat in my room…”

Cris tutted. “And not say goodbye?” He ducked his head and rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “The Chef is In, tonight.”

Agnes blinked. “You’re cooking from scratch?”

“Eh, replicated ingredients. I like to get my hands into the cooking, you know? There’s heart in it that way.”

She smiled one of her shy smiles, rare but sweet. But even so, Agnes held herself in stillness.

Cris cocked his head at the music - a soprano, sweet and eerie, with an astonishing power as she prowled through the accidentals. It reminded him, somehow, of fractal mathematics.

“That’s not thumpy enough for one of my Klingon operas,” he remarked.

“It’s Kasseelian.” As Agnes spoke the singer choked off in an undignified squawk, followed by rueful laughter and the instrumental accompaniment dying away. A chair squeaked, recorded in crystal clarity, then a cough and a ladder of experimental scales.

“This is a bootleg. Kind of not. But not… you know? The Kasseelians, they pick out their divas when they’re little girls and train them, and train them, all hidden away, and at the end, the ones that make it through perform just once. It’s a holy rite to them. _The flower that blooms once in a hundred years, perfect and dying.”_

Agnes looked at Cris’s face and said earnestly, “It’s not really a hundred years and they don’t really die. I got this from a retired diva, she was visiting Okinawa to listen to the _shima-uta._

“She was a musicologist then. Probably still is. Brilliant. She wouldn’t ever sing for me but she gave me a recording of one of her rehearsals. And her night of singing, too, but I like this better.” She frowned. “Not the flower but the imperfect, struggling stem.”

“Never sang again, huh?” Cris frowned, oddly angry on this singer-saint’s behalf.

“It’s the custom, in Kasseelia. To them, to her, the singer did die. They take their myths seriously, it’s… how they shape their perception of the world. How they work out what’s important.”

“How they shape their consciousness?”

Agnes grinned suddenly, and startled herself. “Not as painful, perhaps.”

Cris opened out his hand, palm up, and offered it.

“It’s an imperfect struggling dinner - nothing on my _mamá's,”_ Cris said. “But you’re welcome to it.” He looked at her very gently, as if to tame a wild thing. “If you like.”

She took his hand and followed him out of her quarters, leaving the holographic images behind her.

The little broom hopped on.

**Author's Note:**

> // The music Agnes was listening to in 1.03, when Commodore Oh found her, was “Kasseelian opera”, which was invented in _Star Trek: Discovery._ The “only perform once thing” is stated by Paul Stamets, though it seems an unwieldy way to do it to me. I made up everything else.
> 
> You can hear it here: https://youtu.be/Fcfj7iuyKr4
> 
> // _shima-uta_ \- songs originating from the Amami islands in Japan: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shima-uta 
> 
> // Readers may recognise in Agnes’s display:
> 
> The Snow-Maiden https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snegurochka  
> Blodeuwedd http://www.orderwhitemoon.org/goddess/blodeuwedd-story/Blodeuwedd2.html  
> A Golem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem  
> The Tin Woodman https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_Woodman  
> and, The Sorceror’s Apprentice (Disney version) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sorcerer%27s_Apprentice


End file.
